Google Search for iOS Updated With Smarter Conversations, Google Now Improvements [iOS Blog]
Google today updated its Google Search app to version 4.0.0, adding new voice question capabilities that let users have smarter conversations with Google.
For example, after initiating a casual conversation with an “Ok Google” command, users can ask simple questions like “What’s the weather like?” followed by “What about this weekend?” Google Search is able to interpret that the questions are linked together, providing weather information for each query.
The app’s Google Now functionality will also inform users of interesting articles on preferred topics, give information about upcoming trips, and share information on favorite blogs and authors.
Finally, the app has also been updated with cricket sports cards in Google Now, faster loading of both Google Search and Google Now, and more fluid image results.
With today’s update, you can ask questions with your voice & get updates on topics you care about.
Have a smarter conversation with Google:
– Tap the microphone or say “Ok Google” to start
– Ask questions such as “What’s the weather like?”
– Then follow up with “How about this weekend?”At Google, we know the web well. With Google Now, we’ll tell you when there’s an interesting article for:
– Your favorite topics
– Your upcoming trips
– Your favorite authors and blogsSmaller updates include:
– Cricket sports cards in Google Now
– Faster loading of Google Search and Google Now
– More beautiful and fluid image results
Google Search can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Sonos overhauls mobile app
Today the wireless speaker maker Sonos has pushed out a big update to its app featuring a multitude of new functionality. Some of feautures are brand new and some of them you may not have tried out yet, but Sonos has listed the top six things to try out on the new Sonos app today.
Must try features:
- World’s Most Popular Streaming Music Services: Explore 38 (and counting) music streaming services worldwide, including many that offer a free experience on Sonos like Songza, Hype Machine, Pandora, Google Play and Shuffler.fm. Select Add Music Services from the Menu.
- Universal Search: Only Sonos offers one window to quickly search across all your music services. Start typing an artist and discover their new album, radio station and more. Search for a track and discover all the versions across services including live performances, remixes and covers. Click the search icon in the top right corner of the Menu.
- Now Playing Shortcuts: Enjoy simple one-touch control from the Now Playing screen. Touch the info button to add tracks to playlists, save to favorites and more. Easily turn on shuffle, repeat, cross-fade or set timers at the bottom of the Now Playing window.
- Playlists: Bring your favorite music together across sources, blend tracks from Beats Music, Spotify and your iTunes library – all into the same playlists. Easily add to your playlists from selecting track info in the Now Playing screen and manage them from the Menu.
- Alarms: Wake up to the music you love and schedule it to come on automatically whenever you want and wherever you want, like when you get home from work. From the bottom of the menu screen, set multiple alarms on as many speakers as you like.
- Rooms: It’s easier than ever to control all the rooms in your home from a single touch in the new app. Play different music in each room or group them to play the same song simultaneously. Tap the top right corner from the Now Playing screen.
Check it out all you Sonos fans and let us know what you think in the comments below!
Source: Sonos
The post Sonos overhauls mobile app appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Airbnb goes instant: book stays for tonight or tomorrow, starting today
It’s been a long 24 hours. First, that assassin woke you up with attempted murder. Then, after plunging to the Paris streets, you narrowly avoided death while leading your assailant on a high-speed chase through the backstreets of the 6th arrondissement. Thankfully, you managed to make that flight to Los Angeles from Charles de Gaulle. But oh no! Zeut alors! You don’t have somewhere to stay in LA! What’s a raconteur to do? Airbnb may be your new solution. The company known for facilitating stays in individually owned properties (rather than, say, a hotel) is expanding into the immediacy market, today adding the book it tonight/tomorrow function to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Of course, that’s just the beginning, with more cities to come in the coming months. Perhaps Paris?
Airbnb’s mobile app is the main use case for the new service, with bookings for tonight/tomorrow showing up under the Discover area and in search results. Why San Francisco and Los Angeles? Well, SF because that’s where Airbnb is based (surprise!), and LA because it’s a major market. That the company’s seen a lot of demand for such a service there also doesn’t hurt.
Of course, with instant access to Airbnb vacancies, the elephant in the room is illegal activity: drug trafficking, prostitution, etc. The obvious stuff people will do because human beings are human beings. Fear not! Airbnb uses a form of two-factor authentication to verify both sellers and buyers; in so many words, Airbnb is being extra careful about these listings and the folks using them. It’s another reason for the limited rollout, in fact.
The company’s also experimenting with a new discoverability option, offering packages called “This Weekend.” Say you’ve got a free weekend and some extra dough. Need some ideas? “This Weekend” is your jam. The perfect option for lucky folks with the perfect blend of too much money and time on your hands. Hey, can we borrow some of that stuff?
Outlook.com now lets you create extra-specific email rules
If you’re an email power user, you frequently know what to do with messages as soon as they hit your inbox — even if it’s just to avoid dealing with them until later. Microsoft is more than happy to accommodate your exacting requirements, as it just began rolling out a big Outlook.com update that allows for particularly complex email rules. You can now perform automatic actions based on time limits, the read state, email tallies and the familiarity of a contact. If you haven’t read a friend’s message for a day, for example, you can mark it as important so that it doesn’t get buried.
Whether or not you’re that demanding, there are a few other upgrades you’re likely to notice in day-to-day use. You can now respond in-line to an email thread, and it’s possible to undo mistakes in more places. It’s also much easier to sort people depending on whether they’re using Facebook or Skype messaging. You can even switch services in mid-stream; if you’d rather go straight to Skype chat, you can. The Outlook.com refinements will take a few weeks to reach everyone, but it might be worth the wait if you believe that small time-savers make a big difference.
Filed under: Internet, Microsoft
Source: Outlook Blog
Sonos’ revamped, search-friendly music controller is now available to everyone
Should you own any Sonos audio gear, you’ve probably been on pins and needles waiting for the company’s big (and frankly overdue) controller app revamp. Well, it’s here: starting today, both Android and iOS users can snag the redesigned remote without having to sign up for a beta test. As before, the centerpiece is a universal search that makes it easier to find music, whether it’s on your phone or a streaming service like Google Play. You’ll also get a truly modern-looking interface that’s far simpler for both finding your next tune and setting up multi-room sound. The app is available as we write this, so have at it if you’re a fan of Sonos’ wireless speaker tech.
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile
Source: Sonos Blog, App Store, Google Play
Care about an open internet? Tell the US government on Twitter today
Rumors that the FCC would let ISPs like Comcast or Verizon give an internet “fast lane” to well-heeled customers has become a debacle, with Google, Yahoo and a hundred other companies denouncing the idea. The FCC and chairman Tom Wheeler have been in damage control mode ever since, and now want to hear what you think about net neutrality. Starting at 2pm ET today, FCC Senior Counsel Gigi B. Sohn will take your questions over Twitter, submitted using the #FCCNetNeutrality hashtag. Then, you’ll just need to search Twitter using that same hashtag to follow the resulting dialogue. For instance, we’re curious to find out how it could allow such fast lanes without slowing down everybody else, something they’ve sworn not to do. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg — given the sudden swarm of interest in the subject, it should make for a fascinating hour if you can spare it.
Source: FCC
The Xbox One price drop isn’t just to boost sales, says Microsoft
This morning, less than a year after Microsoft unveiled its Xbox One, the game console’s price dropped from $500 to $400. How’s Microsoft making up for the price difference? By removing Kinect, of course. The camera/microphone peripheral introduced halfway through Xbox 360′s life cycle was a standard in every Xbox One sold since launch last November, but no longer. As of this June, a second option will exist on retailer shelves. A less expensive option. And Xbox marketing lead Yusuf Mehdi is all about that option:
“We have 80-plus million Xbox 360 users today who want an Xbox One, and many of them tell us, ‘For me, it’s an affordability issue. I’m gonna get there, it’s just a question of time. If you make it more affordable, then I’ll upgrade faster.’ So this is an opportunity to really make it easier for them to get there at their pace.”
Of course, providing that option is in the interest of spurring sales. The issue isn’t that Xbox One consoles aren’t selling, it’s that they’re not selling as fast as Sony’s PlayStation 4. Currently, Xbox One is a couple million units behind PlayStation 4, and it’s impossible to cite those numbers without considering today’s news as directly attributable. Mehdi doesn’t agree.
“For us, it has not really been about that,” he told us in a brief interview this afternoon. First, it’s about that aforementioned choice. Second, the folks at Xbox feel as though, at this point, they’ve completed their goal of “defining a next-generation console.” As such, moving on makes sense (to Microsoft, anyway).
The Xbox One is designed around voice control. You turn it on with your voice. You open games and browse Netflix and everything else, all through voice. For anyone who’s tried navigating Xbox One without Kinect, you already know the sad truth: it’s a mess. Microsoft is thankfully aware of this issue, and is working on a fix. “We do want to find ways to give you some of those shortcuts and make some of the things that we have with Kinect easier with the controller,” Mehdi said. “You can expect to see us do a bunch of things over the coming months to make the experience easier and easier, even if you don’t have a Kinect.”
The changes aren’t coming before E3, but not far after. “We’re still kind of working through that,” he said.
So, beyond pricing, what else inspired the price drop? Kinect voice localization “was not a factor,” Mehdi said, but the upcoming launch of Xbox One in China certainly seems a likely culprit in the removal of Kinect. At very least, it’s a major technical hurdle “You have to develop a local voice model for each country. That takes a bunch of time to get there,” he said. Should the Xbox One show up in new territories without Kinect, you’ll have to forgive the lack of surprise on our faces.
Filed under: Cameras, Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD, Microsoft
TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION, the game, headed to Android later this Year
DeNA and Hasbro have a Transformer game headed our way later this year, TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION. The new title will be the official game for the new movie that is hitting theaters June 27. The title is in active development but today’s press release clues us in a little to what the game will look like and how it will play out.
TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION will be a combat runner style game with some of your favorite Autobots.
“The TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION mobile game will deliver an explosive interactive entertainment experience on mobile devices for TRANSFORMERS fans and consumers looking to extend their movie experience after the credits roll,” said Barry Dorf, vice president of partnerships and alliances at DeNA. “This isn’t your typical runner game; this game puts the player in the middle of an action-packed Hollywood blockbuster where it’s destroy or be destroyed!”
The title will come in the free-to-play format, so you can expect some degree of real money spending. I would imagine it will be tailored to unlocking other Autobot friends and upgrades like armor and weapons and such. Speaking of weapons, part of the press release offers up a freebie to those that want to sign up for pre-registration through www.transformers-mobile.com with their Facebook account. If you choose to do that, you will get a free Rare Transmetal Rocket Launcher.
They don’t give us a solid date for the launch of the game other than “later this year”, we hope it is close too, or shortly after, the theatrical release of the new film though.
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Motorola Moto E officially launched in India at INR 6,999
Motorola has officially unveiled the Moto E at a press event in India. The Moto E is targeted towards the entry-level market and comes with hardware specifications lower than that of the Moto G which was released back in November last year. The Moto E comes with a 4.5 inch LCD screen, dual-core Snapdragon 200 processor, 1 GB of RAM, Android 4.4.2 KitKat, 5 MP camera and 1980 mAh battery. The Motorola Moto E is priced at INR 6,999 ($117 USD) in India and will be exclusively available on Flipkart. Catered towards budget conscious users in the emerging markets like India, the Moto E comes with dual SIM card slots.
Motorola Moto E
Motorola Moto E Specifications
- 4.3 inch LCD display, qHD (960 x 540 pixels) resolution, Gorilla Glass 3, Anti-Smudge Coating
- 1.2 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor, Cortex A7 CPU, Adreno 302 GPU (400 MHz)
- 1 GB RAM, 4GB ROM, microSD card slot
- Android 4.4.2 KitKat, Stock Android UI
- 5 MP camera, FWVGA video recording (30 fps), No LED flash, No front-facing camera
- dual SIM, 3G + 2G, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, GLONASS A-GPS, microUSB v2.0 port
- 12.3 mm thin (6.2 mm at edges), 142 grams
- 1980 mAh battery
The Motorola Moto E will compete with a host of entry-level Android and Windows Phone smartphones. In spite of its dirt cheap price, it comes with a decently high resolution screen, latest version of Android and anti-smudge coated Gorilla Glass 3 screen protection. The Moto E is surely to be a best-seller due to its value for money factor as well as a fact that most of the smartphones in its price range aren’t as decently equipped. Competitors in its price range are from local brands which are known for notorious build quality issues and lack of software updates.
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Beats Music’s Subscriber Base Pegged at Just 111,000
A new screenshot shared by The Trichordist (via The Guardian) allegedly reveals that the Beats Music service had only about 111,000 subscriber accounts during the month of March, indicating that Apple is indeed likely to be purchasing Beats for some combination of its headphones business, streaming technology, brand, and industry connections rather than the existing subscription service.
An acquisition by Apple would undoubtedly boost exposure for the Beats Music service, and potential tie-ins with Apple’s existing iTunes services would offer a strong platform for growth, meaning that Apple is likely relatively unconcerned with the small subscriber base.
The leaked royalty sheet breaks down the subscriber numbers according to the available plans, and of the roughly 111,000 accounts, just under 50,000 were individual accounts while 61,621 were joint “family” accounts available through a promotional arrangement with AT&T. Beats Music has not released subscriber numbers, but this leaked sheet appears to corroborate an earlier report from Billboard that claims Beats’ early subscriber estimates have been “disappointing” to music label executives.
Apple had reportedly been impressed with the subscription conversion rate for Beats, although it is not entirely clear from the chart where those users are accounted for. Roughly 70% of total plays fall under a “promotional royalty rate” category, with the remaining being subject to standard royalty calculations, although it is unclear what criteria cause a play to be placed in either of the two categories.
Looking at the individual subscriptions, the numbers show that Beats pays out approximately 65% of its revenue to rightsholders, similar to other streaming services, with labels receiving by far the largest chunk and songwriters receiving only a tiny slice through their performance rights organizations (PROs).
Apple is reportedly acquiring Beats Electronics for music industry veteran Jimmy Iovine and musician Dr. Dre, both of whom may play a crucial role in Apple’s future music strategy. The Cupertino company also will receive a high-margin headphone business that could be help Apple attract a wealthier and younger clientele.
AIVAnet 